Jannisary announcements and comments

[Tecknophyle]

Just in case anyone cares, I really disliked the way the look of the Valkyrie turned out so I rebuit it and re-rendered the external shots of it seen in Episode 6 and changed the images in the gallery. I'm also going to re-render and change the images in episode 5 where you see a hologram of the ship. Again, only if you care.

[pelusa1ca]

Tecknophyle,

Just offering up a personal critique of your wonderful story Janissary, this is merely my opinion and should be taken as such. I have to admit there was some trepidation on my part, as your first major story Master of His Domain had some gender transformation in it and that is not something I look for normally in mind control stories. But your render work is top notch and you stores very detailed so I took a read and it was an excellent start.

Some general spoilers for those who have not read the story up to this point.

I am a male dominant – serial recruitment fan, so the first two chapters were fantastic. Not as big a fan of the bald and marked slaves…but then again I kept reading and saw some of the changes and well I digress. So Chapter 1 was a great start, complicated political background with several players and lots of opportunity to operate on the edge. I am a fan of both mindless robots and smart sexy slaves who work to further their evil master’s ambitions…sometimes a simple command switches them from one to another so Chapter 2 was really cool.

Chapter 3 and we finally meet the Janissary, and some of her history. Loved the little bugs…but they seem to have moved out of the story now. You added quite a bit in this chapter, I knew there were three sides in a possible future conflict…or four…but now it might be five.

Chapter 4 and we get the Janissary backstory. We also get a delectable new twist as it seems Earth is on to Temar (love the bodyguards…although I might have had them show even more skin) and a reason for the Janissary’s involvement.

Chapter 5 and the story really gets going. I just love the direction it is taking. Temar and his powerbase…I would love to see more of it.

There's a five-month period that has yet to be explored, from his arrival at the Novaroman ship in the Leskojitan system to his meeting with the Elysian president. Well, maybe a few weeks that are important: the conversation with the colonel and the president indicates Temar's been on Elysia for a few months and the implication is that he's been building a power base in that time. Remember, he only found out about the conspiracy by accident when his real goal was to get a spy near the colonel, the de facto head of the government. So what happened before he arrived at Elysia? We already know he lied to the crew of the ship when he met up with them. Something happened.

I can pretty well guarantee that people's first guesses will be wrong.

I really hope that I am not wrong...as the power base I imagine is pretty fantastic! I love the thought of Temar quietly building his own faction...one not beholden to the major players.

Chapter 6 saw the introduction of the crew of the Earth ship and I am really excited and hope that the female crew will at some point fall to the ambitions Temar. Not as big a fan of the Hive like group…although I hope they are yet another force instead of one we have already met. While I do like armies of drones in stories…I find that when they have no visible face they sort of become less attractive to me…again just personal preference.

Please keep up the great poser work and wonderful story telling.

Pelusa

PS:

There's a bit in the second episode when Temar is talking to LaChance and mentions that he's starting to find the look old-fashioned (not to mention slaves not using personal pronouns like "I" and "me" really annoying). The purpose of the conversation was to indicate that he's starting to think outside the confines of his cultural background: he doesn't need those symbols for his slaves any more. He's confident enough to rely on their judgement and take their advice, so he doesn't need them to be uneducated and utterly subservient either. And from a practical standpoint, it makes him a bit less obvious. The eye colour thing is just preference on his part. He didn't do that to the cousins because the one was acting as a spy for him so he had to keep her looking the same (until the reveal), and the colonel still has to play her part, so she can't look any different either. Well, except for the *ahem* enhancement.

I like the enhancements...although I am more of a white eyes fan myself. Having the slaves show their submission when being shown off to potential allies is great.

I heartily recommend this story.

P

[Tecknophyle]

Things are happening on Elysia under the dim-witted nose of the President, and his new best friend might not have his best interests at heart.

Episode 7 of Janissary is now available in the members area at http://www.mccomix.com/members/gallery2 ... emId=65483

[Tecknophyle]

The Emperor of the Novaroman Empire is alerted to the "arms smuggling" that the Alliance has reportedly found, but his son smells something fishy and has his own plans. And on a lonely ball of rock orbiting a brown dwarf, a survey team stumbles on something that gets the attention of Alarius Temar's hitherto secret partner, revealing yet another agenda.

Episode 8 of Janissary is now available at http://www.mccomix.com/members/gallery2 ... emId=65830

By the by, comments are welcome.

[mitru]

As newcomer I've to say that you did a great work on this issue.

I like the scifi series and the background you've created here... good work!

PS. What program did you use for opening render? Bryce? It's only curiosity

[Tecknophyle]

Vue 10.5

[Tecknophyle]

A look back into the past of Athena Spartan reveals her second encounter with a power beyond humanity, while in the present the president of Elysia is blissfully unaware of what's happening under his nose.

Episode 9 of Janissary is now available in the member's area at http://www.mccomix.com/members/gallery2 ... emId=66182

As always, comments are welcome.

[Tecknophyle]

The Themiskiran Matriarchy is finally invited to the party brewing around Elysia, but an internal dispute between the Archona and members of the aristocracy threaten to bring their entire system crashing down, until the Archona reveals that she has some secrets hiding in the palace basement.

Episode 10 of Janissary is now available in the Members Area at http://www.mccomix.com/members/gallery2 ... emId=67484. Now with more fetish!

Comments, good bad and ugly, are always welcome.

[sohta123]

Great issue! Just wish the brainwashing session had a few more frames. Maybe a look back at the daughter while she was explaining what was done to her.
Cool story though!

[Sumatra]

Loving the series so far. Nice rendering, settings. Adding Ericka was nice touch, has a role besides Mrs. Spartan.

Brainwashing scene this issue was nice. My main criticism of this series is it's too jumbled. Every issue looks like a mini story, tied by timeline, same characters. It started off strong with the women being enslaved, then got taken offroad some. Enjoying it nevertheless.

-Sumatra

[Tecknophyle]

The main reason for the jumping around is that there is a lot of setup required because there's a lot of different agendas at play, and so each faction needs a bit of backstory to explain why they are (or will be) doing certain things and to let you know some things about them. The next chapter builds on what's happening "now", and then there's one more to give the last bit of backstory. After that, everyone is finally assembled in one place (or at least brought to the present) and the story can proceed in a much more linear fashion.

To keep track of the factions who have been introduced so far:
Alliance - tensions with the Novaromans and Themiskirans, willing to use Athena as a pawn to assert their muscle over the other two but are the nominal "good guys"
Novaromans - hate the Themiskirans, tensions with the Alliance, keep women is explicit slavery with no rights, don't have particular issues with the altered humans of other worlds. In other words sexist but not racist.
Themiskirans - hate the Novaromans, males are basically no more than glorified apes and so are treated as pets. Incredibly racist when it comes to non-baseliune humans.
Luanne C. Fair/Lucille Ferre/Lucifer - apparently associated with the Alliance without their knowledge
Centrum - the technological backer of Alarius Temar, has an agenda of his own
Alarius Temar - Novaroman, but gone rogue, associated with Centrum, backing the Elysian government while secretly taking control of it, doesn't hold his people's same general dismissal of women
Elysians - secretly being subverted by Temar's enslaved operatives
Archona Herris Belsari - leader of the Themiskirans and secretly manipulating things to become absolute dictator. Apparently is a megalomaniac.

All of this takes a bit of time to set up.

[Tecknophyle]

Having obtained the location of the codes for the Elysian system defense network, Temar moves to secure them under the nose of his "good friend", the President, but things are happening behind Temar's back as well...

Episode 11 of Janissary is now available in the member's area.

http://www.mccomix.com/members/gallery2 ... emId=67983

Just as a note: the majority of this episode was actually rendered back in January and early February before a certain announcement came from Italy, so there is absolutely, I repeat, absolutely NO relationship between events in this episode and the real world news. It is entirely, 100% coincidental.

[cvn88]

All I know is that if the "set-up" chapters have been this good, once all the different factions are brought together things should get really interesting. Jannisary remains "appointment viewing" and I can't wait for the next installment.

[Sumatra]

Loving the story unfolding. Seems to be coming to a head. Guessing Centrum secretly controls all Temar's slaves, not just Elenis?

Normally religion mixed into science fiction doesn't work for me, glad to see it turn out quickly. Couple of confusing points. What was with Sister Jane's tongue? All the sisters were modified like that? Do the Themiskirans have a presence in Elysia?

-Sumatra

[Tecknophyle]

Loving the story unfolding. Seems to be coming to a head. Guessing Centrum secretly controls all Temar's slaves, not just Elenis?

Normally religion mixed into science fiction doesn't work for me, glad to see it turn out quickly. Couple of confusing points. What was with Sister Jane's tongue? All the sisters were modified like that? Do the Themiskirans have a presence in Elysia?

-Sumatra

The tongue? Temar getting his freak on when he changed her. Yes, all the other nuns were similarly modified.

No, the Themiskirans don't, officially. I have a 3D map of the stars within 75 light years of Earth which is the basis of human space in this setting (with some minor tweaks, such as some fictional stars to allow jump routes where I need them). In the map, both Themiskira (Tau Ceti) and Novaroma (Delta Pavonis) are "below" the Sol system (Earth), with Elysia (Chi 1 Orionis) off to the side. Elysia is near the start of a loop of stars that runs up and "over" to stars "above" Sol. Because of the way the stellar hypertunnel links are situated, in order for someone from Themiskira to ship something to the "other" side of Sol, they would either be forced to go through Novaroman systems or by Alliance-controlled systems (based on Sol). The Great Bear Loop (so named because it starts "above" Sol in stars in the constellation of Ursa Major) allows the Themiskirans (or someone wanting to go the other way) to go "up and around" the Alliance and Novaromans. It's long, but very sparsely populated and mainly consists of stars that are of no interest to anyone.

Elysia, while not on the Great Bear Loop directly, is off to the side of the "lower" end of it, and as an inhabited (and fairly corrupt) planet, makes a good place for smugglers to do business and catch some R&R.

Hmm...some background about the setting.

Humans and the parahuman species based on humans use a type of hyperspace travel. The arties may have their own methods aside from using the hypertunnels, but they don't tell anyone. If stars over a certain minimum mass are within 8 light years or so of each other, a hyperspace tunnel (hypertunnel) forms between them. The entrance to a hypertunnel is a single-dimensional point in space called a node: how far it is from the star depends on the mass of the star. The greater the mass, the farther it is away from the star. For our solar system, the nodes to nearby stars are located at about 30 astronomical units out from Sol.

Since a node is a single-dimensional point (a form of singularity), objects obviously can't fly into it, however, the node has a region roughly a few light-seconds around it where a ship with a hyper engine can "tear open" normal space and enter a hypertunnel to the other star. The engines use "pseudo-gravity" (or "p-grav"), a force which they also use to drive the ships, create artificial gravity (or antigrav), forcefields, weapons, and the like, to create the distortion they use to enter the tunnel. Once in the tunnel, it's a one-way trip. They will emerge at the other end without any further effort on their part. The amount of time (from the ship's point of view) spent in the tunnel depends on how close the ship was to the node when it entered the hypertunnel: the closer, the faster the trip. Theoretically, a ship sitting directly on the top of the node will spend the minimum amount of time in transit.

However, there are two factors which cause a ship never to have the theoretical minimum time, one safety related, one practical. While a ship can enter a tunnel anywhere within the node's sphere of influence, it will always exit directly on the node at the destination. So a ship wanting to enter a hypertunnel will keep some minimum distance away from the node to make sure there's no collision with someone suddenly emerging. You can think of a hypertunnel as sort of like a funnel: there's a big, wide end that you can pour stuff into, but a very small end where it comes out.

(A ship in a hypertunnel, incidentally, is totally cut off from the "normal" universe. Each ship forms its own unique hypertunnel where it is isolated from anything outside it's p-grav drive field.)

The second factor is that the node is affected by gravity. While the node from Sol to Wolf 359 will always be about 30 AU from Sol and in the direction where Wolf 359 is now (which might not be where it appears to be: the light from that star shows where it was 7.8 years ago), it, for lack of a better word, "jiggles" due to the gravity of not just the Sun but the planets and other junk orbiting around it. This makes it extremely hard to locate precisely at any given second, which means that a ship wanting to enter a tunnel doesn't know for certain exactly how far it is away from the node until the instant it enters the tunnel, and then they can figure out exactly how long they will be in transit. This is also a good reason for a ship entering a tunnel to keep a respectful distance away from where they think the node is when the enter a tunnel. In stars that are "barren" (very little in orbit) it's much easier than with stars with crowded systems.

This has obvious military consequences: you know, generally, where an invading ship must appear, which gives fixed defenses an opportunity to be ready. (Note that Temar wants the system defense command codes so he can seize control against internal threats if/when his puppets launch a coup. Now why would Centrum need them, hmm?) On the other hand, the quasi-random nature of entry--you don't know how long the trip will take until after you've already passed the point of no return--makes multiple-ship invasions practically impossible: you can't coordinate a fleet's timing, and it would be annoying for the battleship that was supposed to cover your command ship's arrival to show up only to discover the command ship had arrived the day before and had already been blown up.

Lessee, what else...ships are limited to sublight speeds (roughly 10% speed of light maximum) in normal space, which means a great deal of the time spent traveling between stars when there's multiple jumps is actually spent in normal space accelerating, cruising, and then decelerating between a solar system's nodes. This can take days, even at maximum acceleration.

The 8 light year limit on hypertunnels (and a certain minimum mass of the stars involved to be for form a tunnel in the first place) also means (a) there may be only a limited number of ways to get from here to there, and (b) you might not be able to get "there" at all. For instance, from Sol the only way to get somewhere else is Sol -> Wolf 359, Sol -> Alpha Centauri A/B, Proxima Centauri -> Ross 154, or Sol -> Bernard's Star -> Ross 154. (This is why I had to actually invent some stars to link up some routes). These means the shortest route between two stars might involve what looks like going in circles and backtracking.

The route the Valkyrie takes from Earth to Elysia was Sol > Wolf 359 > DX Cancri > Luyten's Star > G099-049 > Ross 47 > LHS 212 > Chi 1 Orionis. Chi 1 Orionis is only 28 light years from Earth, but the ship had to cover over 47 light years to actually get there.